Lent Day 12: The Scarlet Thread
Mar 19 in Lent
An amazing depiction of God’s heart and how He is in the business of renewing, restoring and transforming lives no matter how broken and hope-less; He is a God who cares, who persistently stretches forth His hand to us, no matter the circumstances we’re in, just like the story of the potter in Jeremiah 18, who remakes the jar of clay (we are but dust 😉 reshaping it into another vessel. I am NEVER too impossible for Him!
Two men who are sent to spy out the land of Jericho, they hide in the house of Rahab, a prostitute, who manages to conceal them in the roof under some stalks of flax. In return for the favour, she asks for theirs, that her and her family be spared. She is told to place a cord of scarlet thread (used for their escape) in the window of her house, “…therefore, Rahab the harlot and her father’s household and all she had, Joshua spared; and she has lived in the midst of Israel to this day” (Joshua 6:25); reminds me of another incident in Exodus 12 where previously the Israelites were instructed to apply the blood of the lamb ( the very first Passover) on the doorposts and lintel of their houses “and the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt”
Rahab married Salmon from the tribe of Judah, becoming the mother of Boaz who married Ruth (the most beautiful illustration of God’s redemptive grace), mother of Obed, gradfather of King David and in direct lineage to Jesus. How God works!
Jesus came to show us the Father. After His time of testing in the wilderness He travelled to Nazareth His home town, on that Sabbath His reading at the Synagogue was that which described what He was about:
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness … to comfort all who mourn … to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair”. Isaiah 61